Artist Profile: Fares Zoghlami

Fares is 19 years old, born and raised in Saudi Arabia, half Tunisian, half British. He was mostly home-schooled and is primarily self-taught in art. His father was an architect and he inspired Fares’ passion for art and attention to detail, which is very evident in his intricate pen and pencil work.

Fares draws primarily in ink on paper, combining various styles of cross hatching, stippling and subtle shading using ball point pens. He adores any technique that uses ink and tries his best to work and experiment with all kinds of fountain pens, calligraphy nibs, ball point and technical pens as well as paintbrushes doused in ink! He sometimes also works with other mediums such as water colour, acrylic, pencils, scrapper board and screen printing, however these are often used to supplement his ink pieces.

He claims to be an avid film and television fan, averaging a film a day. Fares is also a fan of anime, graphic novels, and plain old regular novels. Ideally, any form of entertainment that tells a story, as he believes that is the most important thing a creative mind can do, portray a story in the medium they excel at. Most of his artistic creation is supplemented by excessive podcasts that cover, comedy, science or political news, or the Hamilton stage production soundtrack played on repeat.

Fares recently finished schooling, and entered the adult world, where he is taking a well-deserved gap year to spend on improving his art skills, taking commissions, and building a portfolio for university. Currently his goal is to become an animator, so he will continue to practice in order to reach that level.

Last year, Fares attended Cyprus Comic Con as an artist and the year before as an attendee and he says he is delighted to able to be a part of it again! At CCC’14-15 he was able to meet a number of talented artists and cosplayers, made new and interesting friends and he is excited to meet even more like-minded people this year.

So far, Fares has designed covers for his school yearbooks, an album cover for a local band, and is currently working on illustrations for a few books that should be out later this year. He recently exhibited his work at a gallery in Anexartisias Limassol. He is very pleased to finally get his work out there and hopes to continue to show even more new and exciting work!